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Looper's Delight
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PERILLE writes... > Mede Mede !!! missing in action : Dave Potter and Mike Biffle Have they been swallowed by the french looper ? Will they survive from the alien machine ? We will probably know it ... or never... Same loop time, same loop channel... Jack writes... > So what's the verdict??? My understanding is that it was primarily designed to be used in a dj setup... how does it translate in other (guitar, bass, percussion, etc.) setups? just curious, jack Hi gang... I'm expecting possibly a more in-depth review from our buddy David Potter, but I had a chance to check out the unit and formed a few quick impressions which I'll list below. I have to apologize to Perille for not really digging in and trying to understand the unit better. (more on that below...) It's housed in a cool tabletop setup much like many of the tabletop samplers we're familiar with. It had a nice blue cloud like mist hand sprayed on it and the word "PAPA" on the lcd screen in honor of Mr. Potter... This baby is full stereo for each of it's 14 channels!!! (If I'm not mistaken). Which makes it unique in our world of mono boxes... That alone is worth tons... It seems like it ** REALLY IS ** set up to audition pre-recorded bits into it, DJ style... from a sampler or cd or??? Anyway... you arm record, then press the channel button and recording begins... Once it's in the unit you can "gearwheel" the loop around to sync it up as well as trim the tempo etc. It looks to be really capable in this regard... No midi, but I'm pretty sure most dj's are ignoring midi and doing incredible things... Being a guitarist, (David's one as well) we were both sort of at a loss to figure out a way to arm the recording process in a way that would allow us to seamlessly record our bits into the unit. So it was hard to really PLAY and work with the unit. So I'll leave it to someone else to discover it's fidelity with various instruments and sounds. If the loop select buttons could be simply triggered with a footswitch, that would allow a real-time player "hands-free" access to this critical step, making this unit FAR more desirable to many of us here on the list, and expanding it's scope to include a much larger market. The lack of this feature made it hard for me to continue testing, as I only had a few hours, and wanted to definitely spend a good portion of that actually playing... which a footswitch would have allowed. As for it's capability as a DJ tool, or for experimental layering of pre-recorded segments, it looks to be really great. Quicker than a sampler, (but volatile memory). Possibly more flexible... The more I think about it though, the more I ask myself, what are it's essential differences from, say an SP808 or MPC 2000? Those require more careful inputing of the sounds, but have added processors and filters, tap-tempo, midi sync, etc... although it might be fairer to compare it to a sampler in it's price range of $600-$700. Adding that one extra footswitch feature for the START RECORD function could differentiate it from a sampler, and make if waaaayyyy more desirable to a lot of us, hopefully without increasing the cost of the unit much. I could certainly find a use for a 14 loop stereo machine if I could perform hands-free recording with it! Best, -Miko